Turkey

Turkey is a country located in Western Asia and Eastern Europe, with land on boths sides of the Dardanelles; they own Eastern Thrace in Europe as well as Asia Minor in Asia. The Republic of Turkey was declared on 29 October 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk following the Turkish War of Independence, and the country was founded on the ideals of secularism. Ankara is the capital of Turkey, with Istanbul being the largest city.

History
Turkey was declared a republic on 29 October 1923 in the aftermath of the Turkish War of Independence, where World War I hero Mustafa Kemal evicted occupying Allied Powers soldiers from Turkey and he became known as "Ataturk" ("father of the Turks"). Ataturk formed a secular state to succeed the Ottoman Empire caliphate, and Turkey was at peace for many years. During the Cold War, Turkey aligned with the West, and it joined NATO, becoming a key ally of the United States in the region; in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, its permission of the United States to place Jupiter missiles on its territory forced the Soviet Union to back down from the crisis. In 1974, Turkey won a military victory over Cyprus by occupying Northern Cyprus, and in 1980 a military junta took power in Turkey. The government crushed Kurdish separatists from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and Turkey became known as a brutal dictatorship in the early 21st century while fighting the Kurds. Eventually, the country abandoned secular ideals, and the Justice and Development Party Islamicized society, and the country gave support to Islamist groups in the Syrian Civil War such as the Free Syrian Army, Islamic Front, al-Nusra Front, and Ahrar ash-Sham. Turkey acted as a route for foreign fighters through which foreign fighters could join the Islamic State, and Turkey gave money, weapons, and healthcare to Islamic State fighters. In 2015, after shooting down a Russian Air Force plane, Turkey entered a rivalry with Russia, a new development that could potentially cause another world war.

In 2015, Turkey had a population of 78,741,054 people. 96.5% were Muslim (mostly Sunni), .3% Christian, and 3.2% atheist or other beliefs. Turks are the majority of Turkish citizens, but Kurds form a large minority, and Arabs, Armenians, Slavs, and Persians form minority groups.